Monday, September 27, 2010

So we're in crunch time. We currently have five days to the wedding so pretty much all of my time is spent running around.We are decorating withlocal pumpkins and gourds as well as local sunflowers. This photo is seriously just a fraction of the pumpkins and whatnot. We're picking up another 35 pumpkins Thursday and I also have at least 15 more to harvest from my own patch. Woo!We have our lights up in the orchard trees, paths half mowed, fence up (kinda) and gate painted. Of course this is totally just a fraction of what we've been doing to prepare. We've also cleaned and completely raked the apples and pears where the ceremony is going to be. Of course my mom has done the bulk of that work. She's been an immense help.

We found a local florist and are going with traditional sunflowers with whatever is blooming around the house (aster, goldenrod, perennial sunflower, etc). I'm having a blast through all of this and, aside from occasional mini panics I've stayed pretty low-stress. It helps that I have my bike back from the shop so I can ride and relax. I'll try to do some photo heavy posts leading up to the ceremony.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

This has been a crazy month full of wedding planning and prep and well. That's pretty much it. I put a lot of my gardening on the back burner to work on this and so far things are heading smoothly in the right direction.

One of my huge tasks was to reclaim the library from Cleo, our cancer kitty (who is hellbent on making it to 20 years old this Friday!) She is mobile and happyish and had completely destroyed the painted floor in the library. I scrubbed swept and repainted and even had my settee professionally cleaned. Tada! Not bad if I do say so myself.

Another prewedding task was to bake and freeze 150+ butter tarts. If you're not familiar with this Canadian treat, you should be! They're fantastic and much like a super rich mini pecan pie but without the nuts. I used a recipe from canuckabroad.com that was corn syrup free.

I really wandered around the yard for the first time in a few days this morning. Wedding planning is a hectic and stressful albeit exciting adventure. We are at t minus two weeks and counting! I'll post more on that later. Yesterday evening my single stunted ambrosia cantaloupe fell off the vine in a gentle pouf of sweet musky air. It was like someone packed the full flavor of a good melon into a 3 1/2 inch little ball of goodness. I had terrible luck with melons this year, only harvesting two mini watermelons previous to this guy. Ah well. At least the one cantaloupe I got was delicious! I shared it with Jeremy and Basil (our collie mix who looooves squash and cucurbits).

In addition to harvesting our melon I picked the first of several pumpkins to come today. It was choking a raspberry bush so I decided to intervene.

It's the perfect candidate for jackolanternism. :)These two little harbingers of fall have made me both happy and sad. Fall is my favorite time, but winter is tough to get through. I'm hoping to get my fencing set up this fall so I can possibly get sheep over the winter and have something to do. Heh.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

I haven't had much time to post lately primarily because we have... less... than three weeks... till our wedding. We're not ready by a long shot so the gardens have gone feral and to the side lines. Today it is my plan to devote time to putting in the gates at the front fence, pulling out the cucumber and melon plants that have finished for the season, as well as the beans and corn. While we were out of town a couple of weeks ago the deer discovered my three sisters garden and tromped it into the ground. Bummer. I had harvested most of the beans and the corn so it wasn't a huge loss, it was just a drag to come home expecting my 6' tall garden and finding it flat. The squash and pumpkins are still going amidst the rubble so that's good. :)I have harvested some of my container grown sugar baby watermelons.

They were sweet, flavorful and over all very good. Maybe a little over watery (over ripe) but still tasty. Plans for next year include doing melons and watermelons under row covers in the ground. The cucumber beetles destroyed just about everything this year!